The Vulture (5 page)

At the same time, John Lee had become very involved with his job too. I heard about one narrow escape he made from the Man because Junior Jones burned up the patrol car. I knew that I wouldn’t want to have my business balanced on anything as dangerous as that. I tried to act as though it was just a part of life. I told myself that it was no concern of mine, because I wasn’t on the corner anymore. I still heard the news, though, and it was very strange to hear one of your basketball teammates referred to as a twenty-dollar Jones. The mainline train to hell was collecting passengers at a rapid clip. The older cornerboys had gone the way of the needle, and all I could do was shake my head and swear that it wouldn’t happen to me. Sometimes in the middle of the night I saw myself in a dream
world of rubber walls and straitjackets, crying and trying to free myself from insects that crawled all over me and nibbled at my privates. My hands would be so covered with ants and spiders that I couldn’t determine the fingers. My hair was infested with lice and leeches. I would wake up screaming and run to the liquor cabinet, where I sat up for the remainder of the night with a drink in my hand, trembling.

It was a Thursday in August. I had worked for fifteen straight nights, and Zinari sent Smoky with a message to take a four-day weekend. He also sent a fifty-dollar bonus.

That’s how I happened to be in the coffee shop on Ninth Avenue when John Lee came in. There had been very few words between us since the party. There was no static in the air. It was just that our new roles seldom crossed paths. We both mingled with the night people in different sections of town. When I was off, John was working, and vice versa.

Hot days like this gave a man an idea of what life in hell itself would be like, and made a lot of wishy-washy people think seriously about trying to find God. Inside, the air-conditioner was keeping everything together, and I kept the jukebox playing, so Tommy, the owner, said next to nothing to me.

My job had been running as Smoky predicted. The pushers I met nightly were no trouble. They were people of darkness who wanted to spend very little of their time under the streetlights where I met them. There was seldom any conversation. Maybe once in a while they would try a ‘Whuss happnin’?’ But after a while they saw that my answer would be ‘You,’ and no more. Our relationship was entirely business. I wasn’t really as cold as all that, but in the eyes of the junkies there were always too many things being reflected. The death of men and women without a burial. It was as though death had paid his call and left without stamping his usual notice on the forehead of his victim. He took the heart and soul, but he left the shell of the listless survivor, discarded as worthless. The bulging facial expression,
bloated features, and shaggy clothes that often disguised blue veins filled with pus in scrawny arms. The silly smiles that met your inquiring stare when they snapped out of a nod leaning on an impossible angle. All of these things were a part of the cats I had been with and of. There was no running away from the faces that were often transformed into familiarity by the dim light. There was no denying that this was an old friend with a different name and a different reason for dying before his time.

‘ain’ nothin’ persnal ‘bout nothin’,’ Smoky whistled through his beard.

There were often evenings when I came through the door at Harvey’s near the witching hour and saw Smoky rapping with the women who frequented the place in the late evening. They were all nurses and librarians and social workers, lonely women in general who knew that respectable men often came in to eat at Harvey’s because it was the nicest cafe in Harlem.

I would fall in about ten of twelve or so, and more often than not the game between Smoky and the women was already under way. I would come over, be introduced, and then lay and listen through the hum-and-giggle conversation. Smoky would say things like, ‘yeah, well dadadadada,’ and the chicks would ‘Hee Hee!’ Harvey would come out of the kitchen in the back occasionally and make up fantastic tales about the service, where he always turned out to be at least the indirect hero by pulling a fast one on some white officer. Harvey’s wife would look out from behind her perch in the kitchen and wink at me as her mate rambled on.

The women who sat with us always seemed to strike a chord somewhere in the back of my mind. They were always reasonably intelligent women, with a secret storm boiling between their legs, but too much pride to get into a thing with the first man who came along with the equipment to extinguish it. The eternal longing in their eyes was for some
man to make a positive effort to seduce them, so that they could momentarily imagine themselves in love and discredit the evil thought that their actions were only the timeless, rhythmic movements of a woman in heat, a woman being destroyed from within because her physical needs fought the constant battle with her mind to control the countless caresses that she eventually would succumb to and the many orgasms that she desired.

Smoky would sometimes forget that we were supposed to be working. We would be joined in the small dining area by two women, and he would nudge me in the side as though my own eyes were failing me.

‘look, man! two birds come in lookin’ for a play, les play.’

‘What about Zinari?’ I would ask.

‘zinari got miz zinari an’ any else he want, i wan’ some too.’

Anything that would resemble a difference of opinion on my part would never be considered. He would always call the women as though he knew them and invite them to join us. If they balked, he would go over and sit with them, assuring them that we weren’t drunk and that our only desire was for a little freshness to decorate our table, a little female company.

I must admit that Smoky was generally a winner. He was an ideal man to double-date with. Whereas I was a bit picky, he would rap to the girl that I paid least attention to.

‘nuthin’ but some leg,’ he would say.

He would always bill us as clerks in the real-estate business. This is a business with a future. With determination and a few breaks, there were tremendous advances to be made by Negroes. This was all a part of Smoky’s initial approach. He explained it to me very simply one night.

‘wimmin in harlem jus’ like whi’ wimmin. they movin’ becuz uv two things, firs’ thing iz the body, mos’ a them out that time a night cauz they can’ sleep, they cain’ sleep cauz they wan’ a man. the secon’ thing iz that they alwaze thinkin’ ‘bout tomorrow
even if t’night iz mo’ important, they ezier an’ mo’ quick to the sack if they think the cat iz ejucated an’ got a l’il money, they know they takin’ a chance they never see ‘im agin, but they need a l’il romance an’ all that shit they read ‘bout in the movie magazines, they wanna be wined an’ dined, but a cupa coffee an’ a charmin’ rap will do jus’ as good.’

I saw the whole point. We all used each other. The women used us for sex, and we used them the same way. A double cross with no winner, because all the participants were aware of the swindle.

I was injecting my third quarter into Tommy’s jukebox when John came in. His huge bulk obliterated a customer’s view of the steam that rose from the smoldering concrete. I waved and indicated the booth I was parking in. He returned the wave and plopped, mopping sweat from his fat cheeks.

‘Whuss been happnin’, man?’ I asked, sitting opposite him.

‘You know how it iz, man. Same old same o.’

‘Yeah, but I think this heat is some new shit.’

‘That motherfuckuh is fryin’ brains.’

James Brown came on doing ‘Cold Sweat,’ and John and I grinned. The smiles were forced, and I thought about that. It was odd that we would be forcing grins for each other. Things were changing, I had to admit. John was into his dope thing, and I was into mine. I looked back at him with renewed interest. The youth was gone, and he looked like an old man, freshness erased by some unknown blackboard cleaner. It was a new day for John Lee. There had always been a smile on his lips and a chuckle rolling over his vocal cords, ready to be exposed with only the slightest provocation. The daytime was gone from his eyes. All that remained was the night. He was dressed in a good Italian knit shirt, double-breasted, and silk pants. He was the corner fashion post. The blue jeans and T-shirt were gone, but so was the sunshine. Along with the height of fashion had come
the alleys of the neighborhood and the shadows of buildings that purged the air of theater cops who would inform you of your constitutional rights. John knew all of this stuff the same as I did, but nevertheless the fame and fortune that was his as the dealer was not something that could be easily dismissed like a T-shirt. It was a type of recognition, perhaps not the applause given to a movie star, but the sort of praise you dream about. It was attention, and that was what John wanted. He wanted it badly enough to live near the junkies, who would kill him for a dollar. He wanted it badly enough to take the chance of being dimed on by some punk who would never reveal himself. Somehow I saw all of these things in the lines in Lee’s forehead, and I slowly turned to face my own crumbling mask in the mirror over the booth.

I took a swipe at my hair. There were dark, curly waves that I brushed carefully in place every afternoon before going out. My nose was flat and wide, but it went with the lips and eyes that mirrored my father’s Latin ancestry. I breathed on the reflector sunglasses, wiped them, and put them back across my view.

‘Whuss gonna happen when you git busted, man?’ I asked Lee.

‘I ain’ gonna git busted. What are you, Mother Nature?’

He was irritated. I took another swallow of the soda before me.

‘Yeah, I am,’ I said. ‘How’s things wit’ you an’ yours?’

‘Who?’

‘You an’ Debbie.’

‘We all right. I bought her a leather coat, three quarters, and a watch. One a them wide square watches with ‘bout half a dozen different bands. She digs them things.’

John yelled back to the kitchen for some food, and Tommy scurried out, wiping his hands on his apron and muttering some nonsense about the Mets.

John ordered, and I got up and put another quarter in the
jukebox. A group of five girls came in and took the booth opposite John and me. One or two of them timidly faked conversation while the others watched us out of the corners of their eyes.

For the first time since I started working for Zinari there were questions rolling around in my head – questions that were important to my work and to John’s. Until I looked at John and saw the circles under his eyes and the lines in his forehead, I had been unaware of everything except two yards a week. Now there were images of the things that were really involved. I was running up and down on a felt cushion with lime stripes. Next to me was James Bond and Our Man Flint and Bill Cosby. We were all wearing Dracula capes and laughing at each other but not at ourselves. In the corner was Rod Serling, watching us and speaking into a microphone. He was talking German, and the whole audience was Crystal, and she was crying because of what was being said about me. Behind me were Oddjob and Smoky – the hired killers. But I was the only one who didn’t know that the play was fiction.

I saw a picture of white Narcotics detectives with powdery faces falling on Lee from a rooftop and beating his knotty head with billy clubs as long as firemen’s hoses. They beat him until the shape of his head was no longer familiar and blood ran down Ninth Avenue and small children came out to sail their boats in the crimson river.

The chatter from the girls in the booth across from Lee and me became more bold as we ignored them and made small talk. They began to speak of us in the third person, just loud enough for us to hear the compliments over the din of the records.

‘Goddamn teeny-boppers!’ I snorted.

‘Not the one in the red shell blouse,’ John said without looking up. ‘I saw a pair of legs on her that could wrap around a man’s waist and have him begging for mercy.’

‘Bet she couldn’t get ‘um aroun’ yo’ waist,’ I said, eyeing John’s middle.

The conversation reminded me of Crystal. I was still with her on and off, and everyone in the neighborhood thought that I was taking her down. The truth was that I had been afraid. I hadn’t known quite how to deal with her freshness, her smile, her warmth, or her obvious affection for me that went beyond that idolizing that a lot of chicks had. I didn’t want to lose her.

I was shaving when she knocked lightly on the door. I had opened the apartment to her, expecting my older Cousin Calvin. Calvin and I shared the apartment, and he had left only minutes before to see his girl. I thought he might have left his keys. Crystal came in, and I complimented her light blue skirt and blouse. She smiled as I ducked back into the bathroom with lather all over my face. She rambled through the stacks of old forty-five rock-’n’-roll records and through my cousin’s jazz LP’s and then called me. ‘Can I put on some music?’

‘Sure.’

Lou Rawls came on nice and easy. I could hear her humming and singing the blues rendition as I wiped the remaining foam from my face. It was inspection time. I actually needed a haircut, but Crys said that she liked long hair, so I submitted to a bit of henpecking. Also it made me look older to some of the women that Smoky and I talked to. There were chocolate half-moons under my eyes. I hadn’t really been getting a lot of sleep. I got home about one-thirty most of the time, but when Smoky and I had some women, I was crawling into the sack with the sun and the big trucks, and Con Edison men were starting their noise. I just sat in the kitchen and watched TV. There was no sleep. I tilted the sunglasses over my eyes and went back to the living room.

‘Hey, girl.’ I smiled. ‘Lemme have a kiss.’ She pecked me on
the cheek. ‘I thought I was coming to get you at Delores’ house at eight,’ I said.

‘I wanted to come,’ she said. She pulled me to her when I was back within arm’s reach. Her lips found mine, and I was taken over by the fire within her body, the sheerness of the silk blouse, and the perfume that blew my mind.

She ran her fingers through my hair and under my T-shirt. The cool touch of her palms across my stomach and chest made me gasp and crush her to me. Her breasts flattened against my chest, and I ran my tongue across her lips until they parted and gave me entrance. I began to touch her everywhere as our tongues fought each other. Her breasts, arms, and hips were all targets for my hands, and the sudden desire that I had for her alarmed me. Already I could feel myself swelling and yearning to enter her.